During a recent GDS-Movement ‘Feeling the Pulse’ webinar, Simon Leth Klovgaard and Asam Nawaz from BeCause, along with Tarek Habib from Murmuration, shared how their platforms are shaping the future of sustainable tourism.

BeCause: Streamlining Sustainability Certifications

Managing sustainability certifications across thousands of hotels and tourism businesses is complex. BeCause offers a centralised data hub that automates the collection and sharing of certification data from over 60 recognised eco-labels (e.g., Green Key, EarthCheck), integrating directly with platforms like Booking.com. This eliminates manual processes, reduces errors, and ensures data accuracy.

Key Features of BeCause:

• Automated Data Collection: Certification bodies, not hotels, populate the database, ensuring accuracy and reducing the burden on businesses.
• Global Coverage and Emerging Trends: With data from over 50,000 organisations (hotels, restaurants, attractions and other hospitality companies) worldwide, BeCause observes a high concentration of certifications in Europe and the US due to regulatory developments and corporate commitments.
• Dashboards for Destinations: Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) can track certified properties, venues, theme parks, beaches, and their certification expiration dates, and regional performance.
• Impact Calculation for meetings and events: In partnership with the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, BeCause created a calculator on a hotel’s carbon footprint and water usage that can also be used for meetings and events’ reporting.

BeCause is also working with the GDS-Index to help destinations map supplier certifications in their regions, making it easier to track compliance, identify gaps, and encourage more businesses to adopt environmental labels.

Addressing Key Challenges in Sustainability Certification

One of the major barriers to scaling sustainability certifications is their accessibility. Large hotel chains often have the resources to comply, while SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises), with smaller revenues, struggle due to the relatively high cost and complexity. BeCause is looking at ways to engage SMEs by offering a self-assessment pathway and making certification processes more amenable.

Moreover, certification penetration remains relatively low in some regions (e.g., an estimated 5% in the UK). Reaching a tipping point requires collaboration between DMOs, certification bodies, and businesses to increase sign-ups, and support e.g. from increased consumer awareness.

Murmuration: Data-Driven Environmental Insights for Destinations

Murmuration leverages Earth observation data to provide comprehensive environmental analytics for destinations. Founded in Toulouse, France, and staffed by aerospace engineers, the company applies cutting-edge data science to tourism sustainability challenges.

Key Features of Murmuration:

• Environmental Condition Assessments: Analysing past, present, and future environmental factors affecting tourism.
• Tourism Impact Measurement: Understanding how tourism affects ecosystems and vice versa.
• Carrying Capacity Analysis: Providing insights into the number of visitors a destination can sustain without long-term environmental harm.
• Climate Risk and Resilience Analysis: Helping destinations plan for climate-change-related challenges.
• Attractiveness Benchmarking: Evaluating how environmental factors influence seasonal destination appeal.

Murmuration’s work is backed by Earth satellite observation data, ensuring global coverage, historical tracking (up to 30 years back), and integration with local, environmental data sets. Their tools help destinations strategically manage tourism flows, mitigate environmental risks, and implement more sustainable growth strategies.

Real-World Applications

Murmuration has collaborated with UN Tourism, Atout France, and major hotel groups like Accor to provide interactive dashboards for tracking biodiversity, air quality, and climate risks. A notable example is their work with the Occitanie Regional Tourism Committee, where they provided hard data on visitor flows and environmental conditions, helping the region plan for more sustainable tourism development.

Murmuration also addresses specific urban sustainability challenges, such as the heat island effect in cities. In Montpellier, their insights guided the placement of water fountains and shaded areas to improve visitor comfort. Similarly, in the Middle East, their analysis helped city planners optimise infrastructure to minimise environmental impact.

Collaboration with the GDS-Index

A significant development is Murmuration’s work with the GDS-Index to automate the population of environmental criteria within the index for destinations. This automation has great potential to enhance and simplify destination benchmarking submissions and reporting.

The Future of Sustainable Tourism Data

Both BeCause and Murmuration are driving a shift towards more data-led sustainability in tourism. By integrating verified certification data and environmental intelligence into decision-making, a destination can:

• Improve its sustainability performance
• Enhance its own and its supplier’s sustainability reporting
• Support visitor economy businesses in achieving eco-certifications
• Better plan for climate resilience and more sustainable tourism growth

As the landscape of sustainability evolves, partnerships between organisations like BeCause, Murmuration, and the GDS-Movement will be key to making sustainability data more accessible, actionable, and impactful, exponentially amplifying and enhancing actions, efforts, and positive impacts.